[echoradio]

I find the Amish’s perspective on technology interesting. Especially now, I respect the lengths they have gone through to preserve community over expediency.

I was particularly intrigued by “The Amish seek to master technology rather than become its slave.”

I love the conveniences tech offers, but I also worry about the digital habits that have turned into unhealthy addictions. Where in the technological progression did we tipped from technology being a tool to being a handcuff. Broadband? Wi-Fi? Smartphones?

Given the deep ties to tech here on HN, I am curious to know if there are others here who have similar thoughts.

[cik]

I use technology, rather than allowing it to us me - as does my family. We're Orthodox Jews, but more than that we (as in my family) fail to see the majority of the utility most technologies provide. Effort saving technology is fantastic - but many others simply get in the way of the type of life I'd like to live, rather than reinforce it. While I love my Sabbath - I don't personally think that the forced disconnection from electronics is the healthy habit people need - regardless of my personal religious inclination. Establishing and reinforcing their primary selves over the years, while learning to use technology seems to be the real need, something that permeates due to lifestyle.

My children play with their friends, in meatspace. They co-ordinate doing so with WhatsApp or Telegram. This is the healthy balance. What they don't do is spend unending amounts of time playing video games, watching movies, or ever play a mobile game. They go to the movie theatre, or watch <insert streaming thing> with their friends should they want. But they don't do this every single day. Some use Khan Academy for play-based learning, all use their eBook readers for the unlimited books on whatever topics may interest them, for when we're out of treepubs.

Our trees are watered via a bluetooth drip irrigation system. Our groceries are delivered once ordered via an application. They walk to the local market to buy fresh in-season vegetables when we run out. During the week, when we study Torah we can access the history of exegesis through tablets. On Shabbat and Holidays we use books. It's balance.

[wiz21c]

Pfiuuu... You live in wonderland ! Congrats for getting your kids to do that !

How did you prevent your kids being sucked into tik tok and so on ? I tried, but failed :-( (at some point, I had to check what they do to make sure they don't spend too much time on these but, well I just couldn't handle the amount of checking I had to do)

[djenendik]

Thanks for this comment. One thing I'm curious about is the influence of advertising. Is this something that is discussed at the community level? Say with your rabbi?

[aliqot]

There are as many perspectives on the doctrine as stars in the sky. A computer is a tool of my trade, it is a part of my work. A phone, or one of the fancy cable TV's on the other hand, is not, and those have a much more pernicious nature, so I don't have them.

Not everyone is a beachy amish, not everyone is a schwartzentruber like you see in movies or imagine when you hear "Amish". You might have a hard time finding any one town where everyone has the same commitments, except for the schwartzentrubers, mainly due to it being the simplest lifestyle. Most of us just prefer a community centered, simple family unit with as much harmony with our neighbors as possible.

[avidphantasm]

Just looked up the Schwartzentruber Wikipedia. Very interesting to learn of all of these sub-groups. I also find it interesting that the Schwartzentruber do allow the use of motorized washing machines. My guess is that the women do most of this work, and aren’t having it with manually cleaning clothes and raising umteen children.

[peteradio]

I wonder if moderate Amish would consider nuclear in any form? For the sake of argument let's say there is a small scale reactor that would behave as large batteries with essentially zero risk and limitless energy. Could that replace the diesel generators or is diesel seen as more predictable? Would Amish ever consider a technology which allows them to produce their own diesel fuel even if it was somewhat complex?

[wodenokoto]

As a kid I hated that we couldn’t watch tv in the living room for dinner but instead had to sit in the dining room with no tv. My parents were so uncool. Didn’t they now my classmates could watch TV during their dinner?

When I moved out I started taking all my meals with tv and later video on my computer.

I’m now in my thirties and I see the value of my parents decision.

I don’t live in the states, but I read online that cinema in the states are quite noisy. Where I live, the main benefit to me of going to the cinema is the forced focus. Dark room. No pause ability, no phones, no talking.

I’ve seen a few “no Wi-Fi, no laptop” cafes and thought them silly, but I’m starting to turn around. It would be nice with a no smartphone cafe, but I’d still want a picture …

My point is: no, you’re not the only one with these concerns and I think you are right that there was a tipping point where we “lost”, but the battle has been ongoing for a long time.

[1123581321]

Theaters are quiet here except during big or funny moments.

[spywaregorilla]

movie theaters are quiet here too?

[elmomle]

The Amish have the right idea. If the point of helpful technology is to help us to better achieve our goals, the fact that we find ourselves drawn to devices like moths to flames strongly implies that the technology is not helpful. If even well-educated technologists unthinkingly find themselves filling free time with mindless (i.e. without prior prefrontal cortex planning) browsing, what chance is there for other folks? It's not a dignified way to be--we're just big rats pressing glowing levers to get dopamine spikes.

[overtonwhy]

There's value to random encounters with ideas and content (sometimes).

[faeriechangling]

Conservatism has its benefits, but I didn't see the Amish get rich off the Dotcom boom either.

[beambot]

If I had to pick a catalyst, I'd go with monetization based on impressions or duration of use -- e.g. ad-based business models. The feedback loops hyper-optimized addictive behavior targeting serotonin.

[__blockcipher__]

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter associated with prediction of reward (aka desire/craving/addiction). Serotonin is very complex (in humans) but more about social-emotional processing.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter you’re thinking of. And also glutamate since glutamatergic firing in brain reward pathways are heavy associated with addiction

[avidphantasm]

And I would say this started with TV, well before the Internet. Maybe radio too? But I want to say that visual media are especially addictive? I wonder if there are any studies comparing social media addiction across sighted and non-sighted communities.

[silisili]

I feel like if our government were more like that, we as a world would be in better shape.

Sure we'd be 'set back' by most standards, but we also wouldn't have global warming.

I'm not an expert of the Amish, but I assume they are generally happier than the average American. At the very least, less stressed.

I've heard enough rumors to know it's not a perfect community, but I still think there's a lot we can learn from them.

[eloff]

It's not just a "set back", it's a fantasy. There's a hundred times too many people on this Earth to live like that. We've leveraged up our population using technology, and there's no way to unwind that without also eliminating almost everyone. Nor would we want to. Say what you will about the ills of technology, but I'm so much happier to be living now than a hundred years ago. Life is better by nearly every way you want to measure it. We'll have to get ourselves out of the climate mess the same way we got into it - with technology.

[aero142]

I think it will be viewed as a common vice like alcohol and gambling. I wonder if we will see something like a temperance movement.

[inglor_cz]

An intriguing question: could a temperance movement against digital services organize itself offline? Most, if not all, movements right now coalesce online. Perhaps people already forgot how to do this in the real world, much like they forgot how to navigate with paper maps.

[Broken_Hippo]

I hope not. I refuse to go back to the loneliness I had before the internet. It is a wonder that I didn't kill myself before I exited my teens. My entire present life would have been a crapshoot before the internet - it is how I wound up meeting my spouse and moving overseas, after all (and yes, a stable relationship, over a decade long after moving).

[justinclift]

> I wonder if we will see something like a temperance movement.

We probably already are seeing a form of it. With "temperance" to online advertising being adopted wholesale via the likes of Ublock Origin and other ad blockers.

Then there are the people who've Degoogled, Unfacebooked, (etc).

If (!) substantially more people continue to avoid Google, FB, (etc) it could become an actual Movement.

Hopefully it happens, in a positive (for humanity) way. :)

[nerdbaggy]

I have some Amish friends. Most have cell phones, they just can’t come into the house. But barn is fine. Most of them have them out of necessity. Calling vendors, emergency calls, etc

[Nextgrid]

> Where in the technological progression did we tipped from technology being a tool to being a handcuff. Broadband? Wi-Fi? Smartphones?

It's not about technological progression, it's ethics and legislation.

Back in the day you would either not build user-hostile technology on ethical grounds, or the law would quickly catch up and outlaw your practice, or you just wouldn't get the funding necessary to do. For example, when some politician's video rental history was threatened to be made public, a law was quickly passed to outlaw the practice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act) and when Google (I think) initially announced plans to use targeted advertising based on personal data they initially backtracked due to the huge negative public reaction at the time.

Somewhere however the tide has turned and building user-hostile technology started being socially acceptable and rewarded by the market. People/companies that we call "VCs" even started specializing in funding said technology, all while regulation took a backseat.

[croes]

These sort life only works if you are protected from outside

[freemint]

> I was particularly intrigued by “The Amish seek to master technology rather than become its slave.”

This could also be a post hoc justification that sounds good.

[dotancohen]

I disconnect on Saturdays, just like religious Jews do. I'm not religious, but I piggyback on their custom to enjoy one day off. Not a day off work, a day off being available to whoever wants my time, whenever they want my time.

From what I understand, Knuth entirely stopped using email in 1990, for a similar reason. But for Knuth, at that point, he was already using email for 15 years.

[jrm4]

100%. I love their approach. It harmonizes so much with how I try to think about every new bit of technology and it's served me very well. Some practices it has inspired for me;

- Absolutely NO social media on the phone. Computer only.

- Relatedly: Turned off ALL phone notifications except those that come from real-life human beings who I know personally.

- Paid hosting and perhaps more importantly, email. Self hosting is a pain, but I want the control and reliability. To me, it's an incredibly bad idea in the hands of e.g. Google. I need to be able to talk to a human who can fix things if it breaks.

[legitster]

> I was particularly intrigued by “The Amish seek to master technology rather than become its slave.”

The Amish actually fascinate me in this regard. If you've ever met with an Amish person, they are far from primitive or dumb.

When the Amish communities were first founded, they were technologically no different than the groups around them. Just anytime a new technology is introduced, Elders host a discussion about how they would adopt it as a group. So it ends up as some Amish have telephones and some don't and etc.

[overtonwhy]

The misuse of television for pure unrestrained capitalism seems like it was a pretty significant setback both socially and environmentally. Was radio much better? Is it parasocial relationships?

[plankers]

it all started going wrong once those damned horseless carriages started hitting the streets

[tomcam]

There is no evidence at all that Internet usage, social media, and non-arranged marriages make people statistically happier.

[cornel_io]

Arranged marriages are barbaric and effectively rape in many cases, though, especially when they are forced based on threats of disownment or worse, which is common depending on the culture. In some places it is a lot more explicitly threatening. I don't really care whether people who are abused and brainwashed into signing on to participate in and perpetrate on the next generation horrific practices claim to be fine with the crap themselves, that's basically the story of every abusive religious practice ever, beat kids into thinking God will hate them unless X and they're going to tell you X is amazing as adults.

[implements]

I think common-sense suggests being involuntarily married and obliged to have regular sex with someone not of your choosing probably leads to an unhappy condition, particularly if your community also punishes or forbids divorce or separation, particularly if you’re female.

Who or what do socially conservative practices like arranged marriage, prohibition on fornication, restriction on contraception (etc) serve? - the maximisation of happiness … or … often paternalistic control over a population for the greater benefit of a socially powerful elite?

[mym1990]

What does this comment have to do with what the parent comment said?

[Banana699]

I believe my outlook towards politics and society is substantially Amish-like, in that I (utterly and devoutly) hate industrialised, massive, yet so lonely and atomised, societies, and I believe the blood-tied extended family is the only reasonable unit you can build a healthy community on. https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=32265182 is one comment where I express those views.

There is nothing I despise more than what I call "The Economist Fetish", you know how it goes, "GROWTH! GDP! CAN EARTH SUPPORT 10 TRILLION PEOPLE?!! LETS FIND OUT!!", economists, as the namesake implies, are the most infested with this intellectual disease, but milder forms are endemic to a lot of modern people. A perverse and virus-like fascination with growing and expanding, a bizarre sexual pleasure derived from imagining life blown up to monstrous proportions. Someone with this disease have a rather curious inability to think about limits and ranges of validity : Can we humans, evolved for 1/4 million years to live among tightly-knit communities, live sanely in those infestations we call modern cities? Can the ecosystem, usually an incredibly balanced and intricate contraption based on animals eating each other to avoid overflowing resources, handle a species hitting 10 billion soon? An economist-fetishist have no patience for those questions, the rush for "GROWTH" overrides all conscious thought and sensation, like a drug, leaving only the raw sexual desire for more, more growth, more humans, more fuel, more cities and cement, more molding of the universe according to ugly and short sighted designs.

I like the Amish, in another life I would have loved living among them (if they allow strangers), despite my atheism. They are as far as you can go against the perverse idea of "society" and toward the more humane "community" without a full-fledged revolution.

[justinclift]

> blood-tied

Sucks for all the adopted people then, and those with lots of non-blood-related bonds. :/

[tresqotheq]

Humans beings can be divided into two classes. The exploiters and the exploited. Exploiters are constantly looking on ways to do more efficient exploitation. So every new technological "thing" that get discovered, will be considered by the exploiters to do more efficient exploitation.

So every thing, even if this thing have huge potential to do good, will eventually be discovered by the exploiters to do more efficient exploitation. I will go even further and will say that things that does not aid much with efficient exploitation won't attain wide spread usage in this day.

For example, we got a TV in each home, becuause that would help with more efficient exploitation. Each of us have a full color, slab like smart phones with a dozen listening devices with 24x7 internet connection because, yea you guessed, it, because it helps exploitors to squeeze that last drop of juice out of you...

Now I am not saying that there is a self declared bunch of exploitrers that decides which tech should go mainstream, but I think this is sort of emergent behavior, given the primal instincts in each and every one of us human beings..